i love black and white photographyhoweverthat love was formed in my youthwith film cameras and a darkroomwhile studying Adams, Steiglitz, Kertesz,Cameron, Atget, and Edward Westonto name a few.And in their prints blacks were so rich you could fall into their depths without fearbecause they still held lightand whites glistened and in between the two a delicious spectrum that made one not cravecolor.

i spent hours in the darkroom loving silver coated paper.And my mentor at schoolsent inquiries for black and white printingto me...which, to this day, still astonishes me.

i've made only one or two attemptsat a bw digital imageand they have all looked like sorry frauds to meand i simply do not think in bw with these digitalcameras in my hands.

until todayi've not pulled up an image that immediately said,"oh, yes, this wants to be black and white"although the lovely vessels in yesterday's postwere a natural almost thereall by themselvesif it weren't for that tiny bit of bluestone in the one corner.

The color images of these Italian arums at Greenwoodgrowing amidst vinca minorwere inspid and the color balance was all wrong andit didn't take long in photoshop for me to realize the problem:they won't look realthey cannot shine as they did when viewing them last Mayuntil i change palettes...

and so i didand they finally got to singa little, at leasteven though these are not the finest renditionsbeing "morphed" as all blogging platforms do to images.

What pleases me most about the whole exerciseis that i am so glad to have finally in a wayfound the rest of my voicewith these new tools.

do click on the images to view a larger version

you can just see the tip of the "flower bud" (is it called a spathe at this stage?)

Here is the elegant "flower bud"

Funnily enoughmy schedule at Greenwood for the past 8 years has never allowed methe pleasure of being there when these "bloom"and, soi share this beautiful illustration(although i believe the spathe ends up being almost pure white)from the public domainwhere we can see that it looks very much like a lily